People

Dr Mohamed Ahmed

Profile

Mohamed studied Semitic languages and Modern Hebrew language and literature at Mansoura University, Egypt, where he graduated with a Master's degree in Modern Hebrew Studies in 2010. He then went on to complete a DAAD funded PhD at Leipzig University, Germany, in 2015. His dissertation focused on Arabic use in nine Hebrew novels written between the 1950s and 2010s by three Iraqi Jewish authors.

Between November 2009 and April 2010, he was the recipient of a scholarship from the DAAD as a guest scholar at the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture, Germany, and in 2016, he was granted a research stipend from the Thyssen Stiftung Foundation to work on a postdoc project entitled: "Code-switching in Religious, Secular and Philosophic Judeo-Arabic Texts" at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. This project investigates the phenomena related to mixed language texts in general and code-switching in particular regarding data from Judaeo-Arabic texts.

Research Interests

Mohamed research interests lie in the areas of bilingualism, sociolinguistic variation between Arabic and Hebrew, code-switching in Modern Hebrew and medieval Judaeo-Arabic texts, the typology of written code-switching and Ottoman Arabic.

Research Projects

Mohamed mainly works with Dr Esther-Miriam Wagner on Arabic letters of The Prize Paper Collections in the National Archives in Kew Gardens, in a project entitled: "From Tuscany to Alexandria: Arabic letters in the Prize Paper Collections", funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation). An edition and historical and linguistic analysis of the Arabic Prize Papers will contribute to this wider project and thus research in a variety of fields. The focus of this project is on linguistic issues, but through the envisaged editions this will also enhance understanding of the transnational economic and cultural history of the 18th-century, in particular with regard to the research on inter-religious trade between Europe and the Middle East.

Together with Professor Geoffrey Khan and Dr Esther-Miriam Wagner, Mohamed also is working on an edition of a corpus of 18th/19th-century Judaeo Arabic correspondence from Ottoman Egypt. Letters in various Genizah collections, such as Cambridge, Manchester, and Paris, provide ample material for a comprehensive edition.

Lecture: 'Arabic elements and Arabic interference in modern Hebrew texts written by Iraqi Jewish authors', Semitic Philology Seminar of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge, 30 October 2017.

Presentation at "Arabic in the Ottoman Empire" International Workshop: The Art of Arabic Correspondence in the Ottoman Empire, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (FAMES), University of Cambridge, 21-22 April 2016.

Presentation at the Main Forum of the International Conference: Code-switching in Exophonic Texts: The question of readership at Kent University, UK. PALA 2015 – Poetics and Linguistics Association Annual Conference, 17 July 2015.

Presentation at the Main Forum of the International Conference: Moving From East to East, Writing from Right to Right: Coding Arabic Place in Iraqi Jewish Hebrew Prose at the Maribor University, PALA 2014 – Poetics and Linguistics Association Annual Conference, 17 July 2014

Presentation at the Workshop Forum of the International Conference: Stylistics as an approach to Exophonic texts, PALA 2014 – Poetics and Linguistics Association Annual Conference, 19 July 2014

Presentation at the International conference "Israeli Studies": Two Generations, Three Identities: Cultural Identity of Iraqi Jews as reflected in 'Tel-Aviv East' trilogy by Shimon Ballas. Heidelberg, April 2012.